My brother asked me to brew some beer for his pre-wedding pig roast party in late June. I already have ingredients for an "imperial mild" described thusly:

Quote:

This overfed reddish-brown session beer crams twice as much mildness into every pint: dark fruit notes with a roasty chocolate edge, wholegrain biscuit and toast flavors, a pleasantly intense estery, fruity nose with a suggestion of earthy hop, and an invitingly round finish.

So it sounds like a brown ale, which could be quite nice at a barbecue in Nebraska's humid summer. I'll either do that or make another batch of the hefe-pale ale crossover beer that was a hit the last time I made it. Hrmmm...

Tonight I opened a tester bottle of the Imperial Mild beer -- which I'm calling "Intensely Mild" as a reference to my brother's personality . I think this is the best beer I've brewed yet. Most of my beers so far have taken quite a number of weeks in the bottle to shed some off flavors. This one, at only 16 days in the bottle, is already fantastic with no off flavors. Just look at this amazing head:

I primed this beer with Munton's KreamyX, which is a blend of DME, dextrose, and some propylene glycol for head retention. (Reinheistgebot? P'shaw!) It seems to have done the trick.

It's actually a fair bit lighter that it looks in the photo. It tastes a lot like a Belgian dubbel: fruity/estery aroma, fruity/malty flavor with light hoppiness. Fantastic finish and creamy mouthfeel.

Twitter really came through for me over the past couple days. I've been living vicariously though a guy in San Francisco who recently quit his day job after starting his own brewing company. He started out as a home brewer and partnered with a guy from the home brew club. They just released their first beer -- a production of 3700 750ml bottles -- late last month but it's only available in the Bay Area.

I noticed on Twitter that a friend from DC is vacationing in CA. I send him a note asking if he could pick up a couple bottles for me, providing a list of stores that were supposedly carrying it. He tried a couple but they were out.

Let me cut to the chase here. I contacted the brewer on Twitter and he told me where he'd be delivering the next day. He had the store set bottles aside. My friend was able to pick them up today: http://tumblr.com/x3y3hetbhs

Peter (pmbuko), Ray (ray3) and I had a great time Saturday night at Peter's favorite beer bar, Churchkey. Ray is visiting his daughter in northern Virginia, so we took the opportunity for further Axiom fellowship.

We met at the Franconia-Springfield Metro station at 5 pm and rode the train into DC. We then survived the half-mile walk, in record high temperatures, to the watering hole - further evidence that Ray's cardiac stent is fully functional.

The bar is on the second floor, over its sister restaurant, Birch and Barley. The long flight of stairs was challenging both up (heat) and down (drink). We got there early enough to be seated right away, and the eating and drinking began forthwith. I think we finally got comfortable, as far as temperature goes, after fifteen minutes or so.

Here's the two page .pdf of the fancy-shcmancy draft list. From what I can recall (10% beers have an amazing effect on the memory), here's what we tried.

I'll need Ray and Peter to chime in for completeness. I know that Ray had one that was recommended to him by Kathleen - our server before Ray scared her off and she was replaced by the more humorless Kevin - as similar to his beloved Heineken.

We had a great time, enjoying flatbreads, sandwiches, and a quesadilla. We discussed family, work (not too much), our athletic careers, retirement, and life in general, with a little bit of politics and audio thrown in for good measure. We did not quite get around to solving all of the world's problems, but I think we put a dent in them.

Ray had a habit of entending the conversation to the surrounding tables, allowing them to join in on our fun. We discovered that the tall guy behind Ray was 6'8" and that the young couple to Ray's left was really glad that he had saved them that table for hours. However, they didn't pick up our tab or even buy us a round. Go figure.

We finished up with blueberry and peach cobblers. On the Metro back to our cars, Ray got a hankering for bread pudding. Peter worked his smartphone and found a place that they headed off to. I, being full of cobbler (one of which was free, thanks to multiple food servers rotating through), bid them adieu.

Good times.

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"The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever" - Alan Watts